Stop Wasting Time: How to Automate Repetitive Tasks in Your Business

Imagine your team spending hours every week on tasks that can be done with a click. Tasks such as scheduling meetings, processing invoices, reporting or approval workflows. Sound familiar? With a study showing up to a quarter of participants' working weeks being consumed by these tasks, this highlights the silent productivity killer these tasks are. This article explores our top tips for robust automation processes to improve your business's efficiency allowing you a powerful way to reclaim this lost time and reduce the risk of human error.

The Cost of Repetitive Tasks

There is a large range of costs of repetitive costs including the quality and retention of your team. Manual tasks lead to large context switching (moving between tasks or applications), decreased focus, and slower turnaround times all contributing to a reduction in productivity. ?Manual processes also leave room for human error which can have detrimental effects on your bottom line such as inaccurate invoices, inaccurate data and missed deadlines. These challenges can also have an impact on your team. Repetitive tasks can lead to burnout and dissatisfaction, impacting employee retention. As well as leaving room for human error and hindering productivity the time spent on these mundane tasks also means less time is available for high-value tasks like innovation and customer relationship building.

Where to Start – The Best Business Tasks for Automation.

Knowing where to start is a huge challenge, with many businesses choosing not to as their current process is largely working. However, automating these simple tasks will allow your team more time to focus on high value tasks which may be being neglected. These tasks include:

• Invoice Processing and Accounting Processes such as bank reconciliation, chasing invoices, repeating invoices and coding transactions to bank codes are hugely time consuming. Using automated tools makes this process automatically streamline your financial management.
• Customer Relationship Management Customer Relationship Management is a crucial part of modern businesses to maintain client satisfaction and secure new clients. Using Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software makes this process simple to manage, increasing the quality and often frequency of interaction. Automating lead nurturing allows automated email sequences and workflows to be set up, ensuring consistent, planned approaches to the process are applied to all potential clients with none slipping through the cracks. This is also apparent in sales pipeline management which will automate reminders and track deal progress, making it easy to know where all your leads are up to. A good system will also be your contact and data management platform, automatically capturing and organising customer data.
• Scheduling and Calendar Management Scheduling can be a nightmare with all parties having jam-packed, ever-changing schedules.? Using scheduling and calendar management software mitigates the back and forth and headaches this causes simplifying booking for your team and your clients.

Choosing and Implementing the Right Automation Tools

Sound complex and expensive? Automation can be a complex, and expensive, battle for many businesses to face which is why they choose to ignore its benefits, settling for traditional methods. When searching for tools it is important to choose tools that will add value to your business this can be done through a variety of methods including:

• Integration with existing systems
• User Friendliness
• Security
• Scalability

It is also important to review the systems you already have. Popular business tools, such as Microsoft 365, have many powerful automation features built in that many users don’t utilise. Start small by automating small routine processes and tasks, ensuring robust documentation both before and after. Train your team on these tools and monitor and optimise performance. Once the fine tuning is complete, you can then leave the tool alone and it will continue to run allowing you to automate the next task.

How CTRL-S can help

CTRL-S are experts with our business analysis team possessing the skills to help your business collate costs, introduce automation and streamline your productivity. We can help your business through every step, including identifying potential areas for automation, to finding and implementing robust solutions. Get in touch today to see how we can help you recover the valuable time you’re business is losing.